Colloids Limited, a leading manufacturer of high quality, specialty black and coloured masterbatches, compounds and additives, was chosen by the UK Department for International Trade (DIT) North West as the overall winner of the Greater China Business Award 2018. This top award was one of several DIT award categories open to any UK company in the North West region which has established strong business links and sales to mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan. Colloids has successfully achieved this, with combined sales in China last year in excess of £4.4 million, forecast to be close to £6 million by the end of 2018.
All of the awards were announced and presented at the DIT North West 2018 Business Awards dinner held on Friday 23rd February at The Lowry events centre in Salford Quays, Manchester. The awards dinner, hosted by Marian Sudbury, Director, Global Operations, Northern Powerhouse – Exports and Investment, DIT, was attended by 180 guests from across the regional business community. This year the main event sponsor was Cathay Pacific Airways, which gave a business class flight ticket to the winner of each category.
Being part of the ongoing ‘Exporting is GREAT’ UK Government campaign, this prestigious Greater China Business Award is given annually by the DIT North West to the top exporting company in the region which has consistently grown exports by providing an innovative and successful business partnership for over three years with companies across the Greater China area; Colloids has been particularly successful in developing business in mainland China by implementing a combined local product and service offering approach.
Colloids Group CEO Russell Livesey commented: “We are absolutely delighted to have won this award, which is a real honour to receive. China has been a key target region for our international business growth, which started back in 2006 when we engaged a local Chinese distributor. We put a lot of effort into understanding the local culture and building long-term relationships, taking advice from key export partners with expertise in doing business in China; we received invaluable help and support from the China British Business Council (CBBC) and the DIT. Since 2006, we have gradually built a solid client base, mostly with global customers, and established the Colloids brand name locally. Chinese customers now recognise us as a company offering technically superior, high quality, innovative products and for being a reliable supplier.”
Livesey went on to say: “Having established a good reputation and customer base, we decided to also set up local manufacturing. In 2016 we opened Colloids Plastic (Suzhou) Co, Ltd., which is our masterbatch manufacturing plant located in Changshu, which serves China and the wider Asian market with Colloids products manufactured both in China and imported from our UK factories. Establishing local production in China has really helped to boost our sales to both national and major international Chinese customers, with the knock on benefit of also generating exports sales to Chinese owned companies in Europe. By a strategic focus on a global export business model, Colloids has profitably grown its annual turnover from £15 to £45 million in the last 11 years.”
Colloids has UK production, research and technical support facilities in Knowsley, Merseyside and Rushden, Northamptonshire. The extensive Colloids product range covers blown and cast film, sheet and fibre extrusion, compounding, injection moulding, blow moulding and vacuum forming production processes and provides innovative polymer colouring and specialty additive solutions for a wide range of markets and applications. All Colloids products aim to provide both added value processing benefits, such as higher throughput rates, as well as to improve the quality and functional performance of finished products.
Colloids Group is part of the multinational Tosaf, with sister companies in Germany, Turkey, The Netherlands, Israel and the USA, offering a global service to the plastics industry for high quality black, white and colour masterbatches, compounds and performance enhancing additive masterbatches. All manufacturing sites meet ISO 9001 quality standards, with Colloids Knowsley having automotive industry ISO/TS 16949 and 14001 accreditations. Colloids supplies the automotive, agricultural, E&E, construction, pipe, geosynthetics, consumer markets, as well as polymer producers and compounders worldwide.